Cochetopa Crossing - CO 114
Saguache to North Cochetopa Pass, Colorado

What I am calling “the Cochetopa Crossing” is the path Colorado State Highway 114 cuts across the mountains and forests between Saguache and Gunnison. This is a beautiful area with many different types of landscape and tree cover. The Cochetopa Hills are the result of volcanic activity that created the Cochetopa Dome: a would-have-been volcano except that it never reached the surface and never erupted, it only pushed up a significant chunk of countryside. Somewhere around here there was significant lava flow because a lot of the countryside shows dikes and walls of hardened lava and the remains of eroded pinnacles.

Like most roads across the mountains of Colorado, this one also follows an old Ute hunting and migration trail. The route that is still followed today originated maybe 1,000 years ago as the ancient Indian tribes made their way across this beautiful landscape in search of good hunting grounds.